Empowerment

Fawzia Koofi is an Afghan women's rights activist and MP. She has already declared that she will run for president in 2014. In this interview with Martin Gerner, she outlines the two policy areas closest to her heart and explains why some Afghans view the timeline for the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan with trepidation.

In a first of its kind initiative, more than forty Syrian women from all walks of social and political life, convened a working seminar in Cairo to form the “Syrian Women’s Forum for Peace” between October 30 and November 1 2012.

While in the last decade an additional 52 million of sub-Saharan Africa’s children enrolled in primary schools, with girl’s enrolment increasing from 54 percent to 74 percent, a large majority of girls – 16 million – are still being denied access to education.

Wanjala Wafula is the founder and CEO of the Coexist Initiative, a Kenyan community-based organisation that works alongside boys and men to eliminate all forms of gender-based violence. Coexist was awarded the African Achievers Awards 2012, celebrating the successes of engaging men and boys as a means to empower young girls.

T­he world is encouraged as Malala Yousafzai continues her fight since being shot in the head by the Taliban simply because she wanted to go to school. This weekend when she stood up for the first time since being laid low by the dreadful attack, the world witnessed her standing up for 32 million girls around the world who are denied daily their right to go to a classroom and learn.

A new group running for municipal elections in Hebron is offering residents an alternative to politics as usual in the conservative West Bank city: Women at the helm, instead of men. The all-female list, which is called “By Participating, We Can,” is gearing up for next month’s vote with a campaign that aims both to win at the polls and to convince voters that women can lead just as well as men.

The women's movement must argue against a de-historicized understanding of new social movements in the African region, profiling examples of women’s active participation and leadership and situating these movements in the history of African people’s struggles for building alternative world orders, says Hakima Abbas.

Somalia has recently selected its parliament on Somali soil for the first time since the civil war of the late 1980s. This is a significant achievement since regional power brokers such as Ethiopia and Kenya, with the financial and logistical backing of the European Union, the United States and the United Nations, concocted Somali governments in neighbouring countries.